In the summer of 2022 (and again briefly in 2023), I was given the opportunity to write a series of 500-word columns for the “In a word” feature in the Monitor Weekly, filling in while my friend Melissa Mohr was taking a sabbatical to work on her next book. (If you don’t know her book on swearing, “Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing”, you should definitely check it out.)
There are eight columns. I give here links to those that are (as of now) available on the web (note that a paywall kicks in after you’ve accessed three articles, so choose wisely) but also to PDF offprints. Note that as usual in the business, I had no input or say about the titles that were given to my pieces.
- "‘If’ brings us into the realm of possibilities" (pdf)
- “Need just the right word? German probably has it." (pdf)
- “Human experience is shared, even if words aren’t” (pdf)
- “Meet the ‘noble cousins’ on the family tree of words” (pdf)
- “The words that evoke ‘sound pictures’" (pdf)
- “Words help construct the reality we live in” (pdf)
- “Other attempts to convey irony in writing” (pdf)
- “Language describes, but also changes, the world” (pdf)